sickly computer.....

I've been unable to post for the past few days as the computer eventually crashed in a definitive manner. I shipped it off to the local IT shop, who kindly wiped the hard drive and reinstalled a load of software I don't want. On the other hand the computer is now working. On the other, other hand, directly I turned it on I got the blue screen of death, so whatever the problem was hasn't necessarily been fixed - possibly it actually is a hardware problem. We'll see.

In the meantime I have been busy honing what passes for my skills as a tiler and general bathroom installer. I've put up the carreaux de platre round the bath and along the wall, tiled the floor and almost all the rest of the room, and all I have to do (a mere nothing) is grout this bathroom - and start all over again on the second one. Oh, and wait until the fittings are installed, and box in the pipes, and tile over the boxed-in pipes, and grout that, and ....... you get the picture I'm sure. My back certainly feels it's been working, and I've got those nice clean tilers' hands (a week immersed in cement, tile adhesive, and grout - it's a very effective exfoliation treatment). However I do quite like the results in the bathroom - I'll post pictures once the grouting is done, probably after Thursday afternoon.

The weather is wonderful - clear skies, light winds, warm sunshine, no rain, lovely sunsets - I couldn't ask for better. And my figs are ripe too - the first I've had off this tree.

I've got as far as the first part of The Guermantes Way - the fifth volume in the Proust edition I have. As some modern authors' first editions are more valuable if you can find one that hasn't been signed by the author, this first (English) edition turns out to have uncut pages. The ones with cut pages are probably more valuable, as few people get around to reading this far into the Recherche du Temps Perdu (my copy has a previous owner's rubber stamp in the back - and so, Mr M.M. Toland - what was YOUR excuse for not reading this book which you bought 84 years ago? But all the same,his name is a curious echo of the character in A Dance to the Music of Time, Powell's frankly more readable attempt at rivalling Marcel)